Orthodox Jews Demonstrate in Protest Against Autopsies

August 19, 1971

JERUSALEM (Aug. 18)

Several thousand Orthodox Jews demonstrated this afternoon in protest against autopsies. Speakers asked for a change in the law which permits post mortem examinations. They said man should be left to die and rest in peace with his body in the shape in which he had lived. The demonstration had a police permit and took place without incident although the police did have to prevent members of the League Against Religious Coercion from interfering with it. Yesterday, 17 doctors at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem issued a statement defending the performance of autopsies by pathologists as a service “vital to us” because it helps “establish diagnoses of patients illnesses” and thereby aids in future treatment.